As farming operations grow, particularly dairy operations, there is an accompanying requirement for accurate data critical to precision management. Efficient animal tracking and maintenance, for example, is essential for a dairy farm of any size.
Among many other conditions and situations that require efficient animal tracking and maintenance, on-farm pathogen identification systems ensure accurate identification of infected and treated animals. Providing readily-available and actionable information to operation managers enables on-the-spot treatment, disposition, and/or other remediation decisions. For example, the identification and tracking of mastitis is an important component of animal tracking. Mastitis is the name given to inflammation of udder tissue due to infection, which can be caused by a number of different pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus, S. epidermidis, and others. Accurately associating an animal's identification with results of her mastitis test enables targeted antibiotic treatment and overall reduced use of antibiotics in farm animals, rapid culling of animals with contagious forms of mastitis, and ultimately reduced revenue losses to the farmer. Of vital importance is accurate identification and tracking of the animal from the moment she is identified as mastitic through the period she is treated (and/or isolated), to the point where her milk is suitable for sale. Too frequently cows are misidentified/tracked, and either their mastitic milk enters the bulk tank (degrading the overall quality and price of that batch of milk), or worse, an antibiotic-treated animal's milk is added to the bulk tank, resulting in the rejection of the entire load of milk by the processing plant, or conveyance of that antibiotic to the general population.
Dairy animal identification and tracking, however, can be difficult. In traditional farming operations, during milking time the dairy animal enters the milking parlor and backs into or walks into a milking stanchion. Typically, the milker/herdsman will see only a limited portion of the animal when the animal is in the milking station; i.e., the rear of the animal from her feet to near the top of her udder. Often, the animal's unique identification is her ear-tag, which is located seven to eight feet from the milker, and blocked from view. Even farms that utilize RFID ear tags and RFID readers in their milking parlors are plagued with misidentifications, as the cows' head movements cause erroneous RFID reads by adjacent milking stations. The milker may then visually inspect the udder to see if it is inflamed and/or express a small amount of milk to see if it shows signs of mastitis disease, such as watery or clotted milk. If it looks like the animal has mastitis, the animal will be identified and/or tagged. For example, among many other options, a leg band may be wrapped around the animal's leg and her milk will be separated from the rest of the collected milk. That cow will then go back to the herd, field, or barn, and it may be challenging to find which animal out of a herd of hundreds or more has the tag or leg band. Unfortunately, leg bands are susceptible to being torn off either by the cow's own movement, or by being stepped on by one of her herd mates. Without the leg band, the milker will not know if the cow needs to be treated, and her milk separated.
It would be advantageous to have methods and systems in place to quickly identify and then track an animal that may have symptoms of mastitis or other tracked conditions. This could then be utilized to notify milkers when the animal is entering a stanchion or parlor, enabling isolation of the collected milk.
Accordingly, there is a continued need in the art for methods and systems for improved characterization, identification, and tracking of dairy animals using a biometric unique to the individual animal, is stable over time, is easily accessible to the milking technician or herdsman, and rapidly identifies the animal before milking begins.